A/N: This used to be part of the previous chapter, but it's more of a little interlude now, I guess. It needs to be in here, though. Ugh, I give up, I have no idea what I'm doing any more.
Chapter Four: The Witch and her Dog
'Easy as that,' she said, smiling warmly. 'Take care of yourself, Miss. Moore.' With a wave the sickly, pale woman walked quickly away, small tow-headed child clutched in hand, their thin clothes colourless with age. The pair rounded the sharp corner of the alley and were gone from sight a moment later. With a sigh she brushed her loose hair to the side and made her back down the steps to the small basement she rented. She stroked the door into locking behind her, soothing it smoothly with lyrical words.
'You know they're coming for you, Pam,' said the dog who was sorting clean-licked bones by the fire that burned cool and purple in the hearth, barely visible in the gloom. His tone was reasonable. He eyed her as she sat down in the rocking chair opposite, resting her feet on the small three-footed stool, kicking off a suspiciously round-bottomed cast-iron pot to make way for her boots.
The dog was a border collie mutt, slate-coloured, mangy and irregular-furred, intelligence nonetheless shining bright in its hazel eyes. 'It's dangerous to stay,' he continued. 'Reckless, even.'
The woman named Pam fiddled with the ends of her long hair, slouched very unladylike. 'I know it,' she said. 'But some things need to happen, Dog. A small, incompetent witch-hunter, and a few old men? You doubt me so easily. Fate is always a kinder mistress to me than you.' A small smile broke her expression as she flicked her blind gaze back to the dog. 'I'm not the one who got himself cursed with sentience.'
The dog rolled its eyes, and got to its feet with a clattering shake of his head. 'Every story needs a talking animal,' he muttered. 'What kind of witch would you be without one? I'm just lucky enough to get that title.' He shrugged slightly, nothing more than a kind of roll of his front legs, before going to snuffle around in the ash by the grate, searching for something. When he finally found a scorched bone amongst the debris, he picked it up carefully in his teeth and took it to Pam, his muzzle completely covered in soot. The witch smirked and took the charred bone from his mouth and rumpled his fur, showering ash everywhere.
'Appropriate, Ash,' she said. 'Dirty as your namesake.'
The dog barked a laugh. 'I try,' he said, diphthong of his northern drawl colouring his words, as he flicked his head. 'Beer now, sweet lady? A reward for the clever little doggie?'
'Drown yourself in it,' came the weary reply. He happily trotted off to the pantry in search of the promised alcohol.
Pam, however, began to examine the sheep's bone she'd put in the fire earlier. She pinched it hard and it shattered into the apron of her corn-flower blue dress, charred shards and charcoal catching on the woollen weave of the skirts. She frowned, examining the slivers, the crumbling marrow and the pattern of preserved bone, which had somehow escaped the heat of the fire.
It was… obscure. She was rather good at being what she was, but even Pamela Barnes wasn't omniscient. She knew who was after her, and why. The when however? Rather vague. And this wasn't being terribly enlightening, for all her effort. The powers she usually sought were being oddly silent about the matter. She considered other methods at her disposal. It was her life, after all. Hunters-born and alchemists were a potentially fatal mix, despite what she had said. The thought of them seeking revenge for a petty slight, a half-mistake, a misunderstanding, well… that put a tiny splinter of fear in her proverbial pinkie. A small, irritating scratch, but left unchecked and unattended to, could become a problem needing attention.
Meddlesome men, was a phrase that floated through her thoughts, always cocking everything up.
Despite the fact that she did so hate disembowelling chickens, perhaps it was a better option than mere trances and bone-trickery. Though the neighbours complained something fierce at the squawking sounds of slaughter...
She sighed heavily, running her hands through her mane of dark, thick hair, so noted in the stories. She'd taken care to be where she was now. Cutting gold threads, avoiding the power struggles and politics of men, moving on with her unnaturally long life. There had been nothing else for it. True, times had changed, and a burning and a good old-fashioned witch-hunt in a legal sense were highly improbable, but that would not stop a Hunter-born from bricking her in a chapel and setting her alight on hallowed ground. The thought made her shudder.
Pamela Barnes, in her life, had gotten by with only two things: a small amount of skill, and an uncanny amount of luck. The witch-hunter who had chanced enough to catch her the first time was a fool, and had lacked the skill enough to pin her down successfully. She'd hypnotized him with ease, and when he'd garbled the entire debacle to his whole village, the myth that had sprung around her simply grew as twisting and wild as ivy on pine-new trellis. The fear it had incited was not unwelcome, but she tired of it soon enough, and Salisbury in the reign of James the self-titled Witch-Finder was no place for an intelligent woman.
So Pamela had relocated, and had kept doing so, every fifty years or so. She liked to think that now, at least, she somewhat lived up to her reputation in terms of her skillset, regardless of her original birth as a White Witch (the history-writers need not know that).
Yet here she was, trying to divine the future from a bone. She snorted, flicking the pieces from her dress and leaning back in her chair with a huff. Fine. Come what may.
Her thoughts, were perhaps possessed a fortitude her unconscious self did not, for at the next moment there was a knock at the door. At that sound she may or may not have fallen out of her chair with a shriek of fright.
A small dog by the name of Ash may or may not have snickered at this softly, his fur dripping with blond beer.
